Timothy Frye is the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy at Columbia University, editor of Post-Soviet Affairs, and a member of the Scholars Council at the US Library of Congress. He is the author of four books, most recently Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia. Frye received a BA in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College and a PhD in political science from Columbia University. A former Director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia, he has received fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation and the Kluge Center at the US Library of Congress.

Ora John Reuter is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of The Origins of Dominant Parties: Building Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Soviet Russia. His recent academic articles on autocracy and Russian politics have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Post-Soviet Affairs, among others. He is convenor of the Politics in Russia and Eurasia Seminar Series (PRESS) and co-principal investigator on the Russian Election Study (RES) surveys.

David Szakonyi is Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and co-Director of PONARS Eurasia. He is the author of Politics for Profit: Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia, as well as articles published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and American Economic Review, among others. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Virginia. In addition to his academic work, he is co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit investigating illicit financial flows and kleptocracy around the world.